Financial Times: Poland’s hopes for shale gas

Estimates of the size of Poland’s shale gas deposits were dramatically reduced in a recent report by the country’s geological institute. But that has not stopped Mikolaj Budzanowski, treasury minister, from pinning enormous hopes on an energy rich future for his country.

Sitting in his office in central Warsaw, with a map produced by Petroleum Economist showing global oil and gas reserves leaning against his wall, Budzanowski tells beyondbrics that the report – which put the country’s reserves at between 346bn and 768bn cubic metres, down from a possible 5.3trn cubic metres suggested by an earlier US estimate – could also be wrong.

“These reports rarely hit their targets,” he says, adding that Poland will have a better idea of the true extend of its recoverable reserves in about three years, when more test wells have been drilled and when the first commercially viable shale gas should be produced.

Both the US report and the later Polish one were produced using pre-1990 archival data, not information taken from the latest tests.  MORE